Jordan's POSrocket turns restaurant registers to a thing from the past

Read In

Four years as the cofounder of a successful food delivery company, acquired by Turkey's Yemeksepet in 2012, Zeid Husban was ready for his next move in the region’s fast-growing F&B sector.

While transitioning from one business to another might be rocky for some, the road was well-paved for Husban, whose first day at POSrocket was his last at Ifood.

“Throughout my work at Ifood, I knew there was a problem with restaurants’ point of sales (POS) systems,” Husban said.

Fixed POS systems required owners to either wait until the end of day, or physically be present at the restaurant to get data on transactions, making the system highly inconvenient. For example, if a restaurant owner wants to know how much money they made during the last hour, they have to either manually log into the system at their venue, or wait until closing time for a report via sms or email.

POSrocket system with bluetooth printer. (Image via POSrocket)

To solve the problem, especially for SME’s, POSrocket was developed. The cloud-based system is hosted on Amazon servers, allowing business owners to monitor all operations in real-time including cash flow, inventories, and analytics from wherever they are and through any device.

“The beauty of cloud POS is that changes are instantly updated to the software like any other application. Users don’t need to worry about maintenance or downloading new versions,” Husban told Wamda.

In the long run, the cofounder estimates purchasing POSrocket will cost 20 percent less than an average fixed system.

The company now employs 13 people and operates in Jordan with 33 clients, and in Egypt with seven clients, largely restaurants or coffee shops.

“The market gap in Cairo is huge,” Husban said. “There’s a lot of SME’s, and the potential is very high. Plus, it is a fairly easy country to tap into in comparison to Gulf countries where high investments are required and the procedures are more complicated.”

Husban distinguishes his product from other POS providers by referring to it as a full package solution rather than just a software. In the near future, tools such as recommendations, and ecommerce integration will be added to the platform.

The boom of cloud

The two engineers have tapped into a hot market. The MENA region is expected to have the highest cloud traffic growth rate in the world until 2019.

More specifically, research shows that migrating to smart POS systems has become widely accepted among business owners.

Although fixed cash registers dominated the industry in 2015, the mobile or cloud-based systems are estimated to grow a rate of over 18 percent from 2016 to 2024, reaching over $55 billion by 2024. The increase in demand correlates with rising debit/credit card payments, ever-changing consumer expectations and the need for more sophisticated data analytics.

Other cloud based POS services in the region includeAlpha and Sapaad in the UAE.

Tala is Wamda’s writer based in Amman where she covers the Jordanian startup ecosystem and keeps an eye on talented entrepreneurs to feature. She is also currently producing Blank Maps, a podcast about statelessness in the Arab world. You can reach her at tala[at]wamda[dot]com, or via LinkedIn.